The consumers have the power, and hold the key to future business success, NCR Corp.'s vice president of marketing Bob Tramontano told attendees last week at the ATM Industry Association's conference in Miami.
Delivering the keynote address, "High-Level Vision of the Industry Future," Tramontano said changing consumer demographics and preferences will force the ATM industry to adopt new ways of doing business and new strategies for customer engagement in the future.
The model that used to be business-to-business, and then business-to-consumer, will have to become consumer-to-business, Tramontano says.
As studies show consumers becoming older, more time-starved, more digitally enabled and less loyal to brands, Tramontano says businesses will have to evolve their interactions with consumers to become more personalized and more based on presence and preference.
"Tomorrow will require a new way of doing business," he said.
Taking note of the India-based HDFC Bank, which offers its customers faster, more personalized transactions with its "MyFavourite" feature on ATMs, Tramontano said ATMs that offer more personalized services — like preferred or favorite ATM transactions — will become users' ATMs of first choice.
(See the HDFC Bank commercial Tramontano played during his address below:)
Businesses also will have to start negotiating with their customers, trading perks such as faster service or discounts for contact information to better facilitate developing a relationship with the consumer.
Businesses will need to build online communities at their Web sites, convert more of their "single-purpose" site traffic to their site customers, work to add new services without adding significant back-end infrastructure, and transform their sites into convenience hubs, he said.
Much of the same is true for the ATM sites, as deployers and solutions providers will need to start adding additional services or attractions — like kiosks for digital music downloads or DVD rental — to their locations.
The goal is to transform single-purpose visitors to an ATM or kiosk into multichannel shoppers and buyers — through those co-located kiosks and by offering site-specific and customer-relevant couponing and promotioning through the ATM.
"Ultimately what you want to do is attract and serve," Tramontano said. "Moving the focus from the transaction to the consumer will build loyalty, location-stickiness and sustainable growth for the whole ecosystem."
